One of the biggest advantages of playing poker online is being able to take advantage of the various bonuses on offer. And with mobile gaming and even smartwatches now offering poker games, there is even more opportunity to claim big rewards. Just about every poker site offers some form of bonus or another. The most commonly offered bonus is the sign-up bonus, which is usually a cash match offer between 50% and 200%. For example, a poker room might be offering a 100% match bonus up to $200. What this means is that they are offering to give you 100% of the amount you deposit absolutely free up to a maximum of $200.

So, if you deposited $200 into your online poker account, the poker room will double your money and give you a bonus amount of $200. In the case of a 50% cash match, this would equate to $100. At first glance, this sound great, who wouldn’t want $200 free to play with. The problem is that there are strict requirements that have to be met before you can claim your bonus.

How Poker Bonuses Work

In most cases, the poker room or the site where you play Canadian online casino games will record the amount you will receive and place it on hold until you have met all the requirements. This is where things get tricky, the requirements different from site to site and room to room. Most poker rooms will require you to play a certain amount of hands and rack up set number of player points to clear your bonus.

By playing the required number of hands, you are generating “rake” for the poker room, which is how they earn their money back for the free bonus they are handing over. The first step in maximising your bonus is to sign up with a poker room with favourable requirements. Always check the fine print on how many player points you need to earn before you can cash in your bonus.

Earning Player Points: Clearing Your Rake Requirements

At the end of the day, poker bonuses are always worth taking. If you are going to be playing regularly online and generating rake for the site, you might as well work off your bonus while you do it. Player points are earned by playing hands and are valued according to the amount of rake produced. The more rake that was taken in the hand, the more player points you will earn.

In general, the smaller the bonus, the easier it is to clear your bonus requirements. Some poker rooms specify a certain number of raked hands per $1 of your bonus. A bonus offer of $50 might require just 10 raked hands to redeem $1 worth of bonus while a $600 bonus would require around 20 raked hands to earn the same. So, what is the best way to clear your bonus requirements?

Speeding Up the Process

If you want to cash in your bonus as soon as possible, you can drastically cut down the time it takes by playing more than one table at time. Simply put, by playing 2 tables per hour, you are halving the time and doubling the amount of rake. Another way to clear your bonus quickly is to increase the stakes, thereby increasing the number of player points earned per hand. The downside is that you stand to lose more if things go wrong. In both cases, you need to play according to your ability. There is no point in losing focus and dropping games just to clear your bonus.